The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Review, Feat. Gigabyte, Zotac, & EVGA
by Ryan Smith on October 9, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMeet The GeForce GTX 650 Ti
Although none of NVIDIA’s partners will be selling direct copies of the NVIDIA reference design, NVIDIA did send over one of reference cards to serve as a baseline comparison (as it turns out, due to a bug you can’t underclock a GTX 650 Ti right now). Since most partner designs will closely follow NVIDIA’s reference design this actually works out for the best anyhow, as it offers a good insight into the kind of performance and design baseline we should see.
For the GeForce 600 series NVIDIA’s reference designs have been extremely solid (overclocking withstanding) and the reference GTX 650 Ti continues that tradition. The PCB itself is actually lifted from the GTX 650, which despite the difference in GPUs is pin-compatible with the GTX 650 Ti and its 128bit memory bus. This puts the length of the card at 5.75” – about as short as a PCIe x16 card can be – in a full-profile form factor. Meanwhile though taking inventory of every last electrical component isn’t practical, as near as we can tell the PCB and its components are completely identical to the reference GTX 650, which means partners are going to be able to easily drop the GTX 650 Ti into their existing GTX 650 designs so long as their cooling is adequate.
Speaking of cooling, the cooler on the reference GTX 650 Ti is a small but effective open air double-wide cooler. NVIDIA’s using a low-profile aluminum heatsink that covers roughly half the card, topped with an 80mm fan. This is the cooler style that most partners will mimic, as the 110W TDP of the GTX 650 Ti does not require a particularly large cooler; though on that note at 110W passive cooling is unlikely. As is common with open air coolers, the heatsink itself doesn’t make contact with the on-board RAM, so RAM cooling is left to airflow coming off of the fan.
NVIDIA’s RAM of choice for the GTX 650 Ti is their traditional favorite, Hynix 2Gb 6GHz GDDR5. The use of 6GHz RAM, which will be common across this family, means that the GTX 650 Ti will have some memory overclocking headroom right out of the box, memory bus willing. NVIDIA uses 4 pieces of it in a 4x32bit configuration, with 4 more pads on the back of the card for another 4 pieces for 2GB cards.
Moving on, along with losing GPU boost capabilities the GTX 650 family also gives up SLI capabilities, so unlike the GTX 550 Ti you won’t find a SLI bridge connector here. What you will find is 1 6pin PCIe power socket on the rear of the card for providing the extra power the GTX 650 needs. Meanwhile display connectivity is provided by 1 DL-DVI-I port, 1 DL-DVI-D port, and a mini-HDMI port. Since all of the Kepler GPUs support 4 displays the GTX 650 Ti can drive up to 3 displays via these connectors, and if a partner equips a card with a DisplayPort connector instead it should be possible to drive the full 4 displays off of a single GTX 650 Ti.
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SodaAnt - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Why is it that all the manufacturers seem to have the need to put two huge fans and heatsinks on a GPU that only has a TDP of 110W? I mean, I can see having that on a GTX 680 or something, it needs it, but why bother on a low end card? You're just adding price for what is pretty much looks.Shark321 - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Chip cooling results usually in high noise, so I'm glad they put large heatsinks on the 650 Ti.Blazorthon - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
The 650 Ti has some of the lowest noise and temp results of any graphics card in its class. Those large coolers are definitely beneficial, not that I wouldn't mind seeing some single slot 650 Ti models.MrSpadge - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
"But as it stands today the GTX 650 Ti only makes real sense for buyers who absolutely cannot go over $149"If said buyer can't add another 20$ he probably shouldn't be spending his money on a video card at all.
TheJian - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
You can say that at any price...LOL. Everyone's budget is different. The 660TI really only makes sense for someone who can't spend another $100 on a 670...And then you chime in with your comment again...Both comments are pointless. Ryan puts crap like that in to disparage NV in every article. At $149 it comes with AC3 a AAA title not even released yet, arguably the card is only $120. Unless you think you'll be able to get AC3 for the price of $30 the day it hits. I doubt it. Probably $45-60. So quite a good deal for someone wanting AC3 and only having $150 correct? Pull your head out Ryan. :) Quit making bias comments like this. It's amazing they even give you a AAA title at $150 range.If some kid's been saving his allowance for ages and finally has $150, to replace his old X card it makes total sense. Same for any adult. These cards are for people who don't have $200 etc. No point in making any comment like ryan did.
And at 1680x1050, where most of these users will run this card it doesn't lose much. He keeps quoting cards above where they should run. $100-150 cards are not for 1920x1200. You'll be turning stuff down all day, thus not giving you what the devs wanted you to play. Just like the 660TI/7950 isn't for 2560x1600 either. He keeps using this crap to bash NV cards. This is why he leaves out minimums on almost everything. If he showed those #'s you'd see you can't even play there with these. $300 is for 1920x1200, $450+ is comfortable at above this, $150 is solidly 1680x1050 when MINIMUMS are looked at with max details. If you're not running with all the goodies on, you're not running what the dev wanted you to play. You're missing the FULL experience. 2560x1600 was unplayable on 3/4 games at hardocp on 7950B/660TI. So why talk about those two in the same sentence with 2560x1600? It's DUMB. Two of the games hit 15/17fps on both cards...LOL. That's a freaking slide show FFS. He bashes NV all day over bandwidth for UNPLAYABLE SETTINGS on both cards in those cases. I'd say he doesn't get it, but he does, he knows exactly what he's doing. He loves AMD or they give him something for the love ;) I really don't care who wins at 15fps settings, and neither should ANY of us. They had games where the drop was 100 to 22-26fps on 7950 from max to min...But as long as ryan evades minimums in games he can quote AMD in a better light...LOL.
jtenorj - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
I don't know if experiencing all the developer intended matters as much as simply enjoying the game. The cheapest you can get a "modern" console(not counting the wii) is like 100 bucks for a 360 with a contract for xbox live. If you already have a decent computer from the last few years with crap graphics, you can drop in a 100 dollar(or less) HD7750, overclock it some, and blow away any console's graphics at 1080p by using medium pc settings. If you up the budget a bit to the HD7770 and overclock, you could even manage high settings at 1080p with playable frame rates. If you want to see minimum frame rates, you can go to other sites like hardocp(as mentioned, though it doesn't seem like they have a review up for gtx650ti...yet). Even better is techreport for testing of individual frame times that can catch latency spikes a minimum frame rate measure might miss.justaviking - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
Eventually you have to draw the line somewhere.Start with a budget of $100...
$100? Why not spend $120?
$120? Why not spend $140?
$140? Why not spend $160?
$160? Why not spend $180?
$180? Why not spend $200?
Why not spend $200? Because you started with a $100 budget.
It's not always that you "can't" spend another $20, but most people have to draw the line somewhere. For some people it's $300, others it's $150. Besides, the person spending $150 might have started with a target of $125, and has already "shopped up" to the $150 mark.
This works in the opposite direction too. Why not SAVE $20 and get a cheaper product if it has "almost" the same performance? Then why not save another $20, and so on? Soon you'll be hopelessly underpowered.
That's the sweet agony of shopping for parts like this. There is such a spectrum of price/performance options that you are always near a 2nd or 3rd option. If there was simply one AMD card and one Nvidia card at $100-200-300-400-500 price points, it sure would be a lot easier to go shopping. But what would be the sport in that?
johnsonjohnson - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Looks like it's gonna have to be the 7850 then. Time to finally retire that 4830...EnzoFX - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Sorry if I missed it, but this is often not discussed. This is something I cannot stand in lower end cards. Fixed speed fans. They are annoying usually. Then again, I usually swap out the cooler. I'm otherwise all for shorter cards.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
Yes, it has variable fan speeds. In fact none of the GeForce 600 cards we've reviewed (including the 640) have a fixed fan speed.